Aliens Vs. Humans (Aliens Series Book 4) (24 page)

“Spy Chief Cassie, you are always welcome aboard the
Bismarck
,” Hideyoshi said casually. “Feel free to stay and consult with Lt. Mabry after this conference ends. We can return you to the
Uhuru
on one of our shuttles. If that is agreeable with your captain?”

Jack gave a nod even as Nikola gave a sigh of relief. What did his lifemate know about Cassie and this Mabry man? “Admiral Hideyoshi, yes, Cassie can return when she is done. Though I’m sure she and Denise and Blodwen still have consultations to do with the Doomat about their animal ethology inquiries into the eco-system of Green Grass.”

“Oh, we do!” Cassie said quickly, her tone sounding happy. “Blodwen, Denise and I will wrap up our consultations over the next week while we are here.”

Jack gave her an approving smile. Then he looked to the left. “Warrant Officer Menami, can you ask the Mess Hall chef to bring us our steaks, potatoes, rice, asparagus and such?”

The tall, slim, Asian-looking woman dressed in Mars red uniform gave him a quick salute. “As you command, Fleet Captain! It will be done.” She turned and headed out the slidedoor to the larger Mess Hall.

Jack looked back to Cassie. “Sister, think you and Lieutenant Mabry can haul in our cooler of beer from the Mess Hall? I saw it sitting beside the wall as Maureen and I came here.”

She blushed, though her rad-tan hid most of it. Being her brother he knew well when she felt strong emotions. “Sure,” she said, standing up, dressed in a green leotard borrowed from Maureen. “We will take care of it right now. I saw Lt. Mabry waiting at the Mess Hall entrance.” She headed past him toward the slidedoor.

Jack winked at Nikola, then noticed he had become the focus of attention of every female gathered around the table. “Hey! I believe in romance!”

Laughter filled the room.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Jack looked deep into the interstellar darkness as  the
Uhuru
and the eight other ships of the fleet left grav-pull drive and arrived at 50 AU north of HD 1461. They were heading home. At last, some might say. He knew the return home was just a stage on their confrontation with the Arbitors and the Hunters of the Great Dark system. There were more stages to go, as they had discussed a week ago at the fleet battle conference. Now, their fuel tanks of deuterium and helium-3 were topped off, fruit and wild meats from Green Grass were stocked in each ship’s Food Refectory, and some green-looking beer of the Doomat was stocked on several fleet ships. He had not cared for the chlorophyll-based booze, but others swore by it. They seemed not to mind how the stuff made green their tongue!

“Fleet is in position for the return to Sol,” Elaine said from her Pilot station. There were fresh flowers in her yellow headband, courtesy of Ignacio’s Garden habitat. Plus she now wore a Commitment Ring. Despite the darkness of her rad-tan, she nearly glowed with happiness.

“Thank you, sister.” He looked up and waved at the images of his fellow captains as the icons appeared above the front screen.  All the captains of his fleet, even normally stolid Hideyoshi, seemed happy and refreshed by the week spent among the Doomat herbivores. Maybe hanging out with party-loving elephants had something to do with that. “Chief Astronomer Nikola, please provide the coordinates for home to our Pilot.”

“Yes!” she said, sounding as happy as she had looked this morning when he’d told her the visit was at an end and they would be heading home. She’d been so pleased he thought she might love-pounce  him. Instead, she had given him a tender smile, grabbed his hand and put it over her swelling belly. The kick he’d felt had been the first time he’d felt their baby move. Tap-tapping sounded from behind him. “Elaine, coordinates transmitted to you. We are 76.3 light years from Sol. Which means we will be in transit for 19 days and a few hours.”

Jack looked back to Denise, who seemed more upbeat than usual. He’d noticed her spending time with an Ensign Hopkinson of the
Bismarck
. They had been part of a crowd of young couples that included Cassie and her Mabry. He smiled. Two beautiful, smart and single young women were bound to draw admirers. And to like the attention. “ComChief, please transmit those coordinates to the other fleet ships.”

“Coordinates transmitted by laser Come-Back signal,” she said, her freckles bright on her pale face.

“Thank you.” He pulled his Tech panel over his lap and checked ship status reports for a final time. No stowaways. He’d wondered briefly if Cassie’s boyfriend Mabry might try to sneak aboard, in view of the number of times he’d seen the two of them together on Mother’s Eye station. Every habitat of the ship was showing Green Operational. From the Refectory to Med Station to the Rest Area to EVA hold, to Lander hold, to their Garden with its grass, trees and pond, until he got to Max’s holy-of-holies, the Mech Shop. His buddy had spent long hours there, leastwise until Blodwen dragged him out for a polka dance in the Rec Hall of the
Bismarck
. While everyone enjoyed being in one gee on the Doomat station, and visiting with the Alien elephants, no one felt comfortable being overtopped by creatures who measured three meters at the shoulder. So most human socializing had taken place on Hideyoshi’s ship. Which the man had welcomed. Even the wild antics of his fellow Belter captains had not fazed the Mars admiral. The man welcomed everyone from any fleet ship. Including Cassie, who was often in the company of Mabry. As was Denise with her Hopkinson. Jack wondered briefly if the admiral might be trying for a transfer of his two ladies to the
Bismarck
. Then dismissed the thought. The man was too professional and too Asian honorable to play that game. He finished checking ship sections. Past the Mech Shop lay the Drive Room, followed by the Battle Module at the ship’s tail. Jack glanced over his shoulder and caught the attention of his first buddy. “Max, you ready to send out the time-lock to the other ship drives?”

The man smiled. Then gave Jack a wink. What the? “Link sent out. Confirmation from each ship’s Drive Engineer. Activating our Alcubierre star drive. All ships going FTL!”

Jack turned back around and watched as the white stars of the Milky Way went jagged, then blurry, then vanished as the Alcubierre space-time bubble enclosed them. To the rear of the ship space-time expanded. To the front of the ship it shrank. The expansion of space behind them pushed them forward even as the space-time ahead pulled them forward. Combined, the two effects moved them to a speed of four light years per day.

“Jack,” called Max.

He turned in his seat, restraint straps allowing the movement. He looked past Nikola and Denise to his fellow survivor. The man’s gray eyes seemed alight with something. “Got some good news for you. I think I’ve figured out how to increase the speed of our Alcubierre drive!” The man’s expression went from a happy look to a big smile.

“What! How?”

Max grinned at Blodwen, who looked happier than Max, waved off a suddenly attentive Archibald and crossed arms over his broad chest. Jack had rarely seen the man look so self-satisfied. Now, he fairly glowed with upbeatness. “Equations. When I worked on the Alcubierre drive pedestal we salvaged from the Rizen, I just tried to reverse engineer the Tech, the solid state circuits, magfield emitters and operational settings of the Rizen unit. Archie was a great help in figuring out the theoretical math of the space-time manifold curvature that is created by an Alcubierre drive. But this past week, while I was in my Mech Shop playing with the Dark Matter equations so we could have something just right to share with Agnes, I realized something.”

Jack licked his dry lips. These two guys always did Tech talk this way. Make a great lead-up comment, then leave you hanging for the finale! “Well, Drive Engineer? What
did
you realize?”

Max gave a wink to Archibald, who was leaning forward in his seat to the maximum allowed by his restraint straps. His buddy then took a quick breath. “I realized that the operational settings of the Rizen stardrive are not fixed. The Rizen setting creates a 20 degree expansion of space-time behind us and a 20 degree contraction ahead of us. That translates to an FTL speed of four lights per day. Maybe that setting is what some Hunter long ago chose for their Alcubierre drive. Since then every other Hunter has copied it. But . . . the stardrive setting can be increased! If I double the expansion and contraction settings to forty degrees back and front, well, I compute our FTL speed will increase by a factor of ten. In short, we will speed along at 40 light years a day!”

Chills ran up Jack’s neck. Ever since seeing the Nasen star holo, with its millions of stars scattered across the 8,000 light year length of the Orion Arm, he had figured the most a human ship could travel, considering fuel and food storage limits, was 400 light years over 100 days of travel. Now, with this new setting, they could travel out 4,000 light years in a hundred days!

“Wonderful Max! Incredible! Uh, what’s involved in changing these settings? Can you do it now, while we’re in transit?”

The man’s big smile eased off. “Nope. Gotta be in non-FTL status while I make the setting changes. Which involve a few specialized algorithms. It’s a matter of a few hours.” His buddy looked around the cabin, enjoying the rapt attention of everyone. “Once we get home, I can give these algorithms to every ship’s Drive Engineer. We can upgrade the FTL speed of every ship within a few days!”

Jack loved what he was hearing. He needed good news. While the Dark Energy projector scheme of the two physics brains was enticing, this upgrade to their Alcubierre stardrive was something real. Something they already had. And, it occurred to him that upgrading all human ships so they could make 40 lights per day would give his fleet a major advantage over other Hunters of the Great Dark. Including the Arbitor ships. Which seemed fixed on making sure all Rules were followed. With the Arbitors being so tradition-minded, he doubted they had discovered what Max had picked up on. After all, Max was a true Belter. Used to thinking creatively, outside of normal parameters.

“Outstanding!” He gave the man a thumbs-up. Then thought of the implications. “Hey! This means if we can find a way to zap the Arbitor ship and its Isolation Globe, why, we can reach every juvenile system in Orion Arm. We can spread the Belter gospel of personal liberty, freedom of choice and independent thinking to every Alien we meet!”

His crewmates laughed, shook their head at his future hopes or gave hugs to each other. All except Maureen. Who turned in her seat and fixed a somber Irish look on him. “Jack, my young impetuous nephew, you realize this will drive the Arbitors crazy? Right now they and the other Hunters assume we humans are stuck in our neck of the woods. What do you think will be their reaction when they realize we might contaminate the whole arm with our Belter ideas?”

Jack didn’t know. Nor did he much care. He was damned determined to upset the apple cart of the Hunter system. It was not
right
for most Alien peoples to be kept in their home system like a herd of cattle! The chance to explore the starways should be open to everyone, whether predator or not. He gave the woman a shrug as he sat back in his seat.

“Don’t know. Don’t care. I just know that I’m bound and determined to do the right thing. And that means spreading the idea of liberty to any Aliens who will listen!”

♦   ♦   ♦

The largest spaceship ever built by humanity floated above the south pole of the proto-planet 4 Vesta. Jack stood under the clear dome that sat in the center of Sextillia crater looking up so long his neck had begun to hurt. Surrounding him and Nikola and Hideyoshi and Maureen were the most powerful people in the solar system, if you ignored the fact that only Belters had access to the faster-than-light Alcubierre stardrive and the super-fast grav-pull space drive. Within a dozen meters of him stood Emperor Hisahito of the Empire of Japan, Autarch Viktoria Goncalves of the Moon, People’s Minister Ying Lo-pak of Mars, Prime Minister Anilkumar Krishnamurthy of India, Autarch Bettina Azevedo of Brazil, People’s Commissar P’eng Hua of China, Prime Minister William Taft of Australia, the Prime Familia of Ceres Central, Administrator Andrea Grübingen of Charon and the outer moons, the entire Mathilde Citizens Council and Governor Billy McDonough of Tennessee, who represented the newly declared American Republic that controlled most of old America short of the East and West coasts. They and several hundred Vesta natives were gathered under the dome since it had been the deep shaft mines of Vesta’s south pole that had supplied the iron which became the steel of the ten mile-long spaceship that floated above them. Resembling a reddish-brown cigar with pointed nose and tail, the ship
Humanity
carried 31,233 humans in Cold Sleep capsules, a crew of 400, and enough mechbots, ecobots, cargobots, supplies, Landers, weather sats, spysats and an Open Library sufficient to support the colonists for three years without contact with Earth. If that became necessary.

“Jack,” murmured Nikola as she held his left arm, “did Max have time to upgrade this ship’s Alcubierre stardrive with the new settings?”

“He did. The week since we’ve been back has had him zipping around the Belt like a hornet.” He smiled at the mental image of burly Max behaving like a hornet. “The Third Belter Fleet was formed during our absence and fitted with both grav-pull and Alcubierre drives. Which gives humanity 40 stardrive-capable spaceships, in addition to the one above us. Max has given the Drive Engineers of each ship the new algorithms and settings so every human ship can make 40 light years a day.”